[BigCanOfTuna]

Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.

[orblivion]

I don't think Jobs would say anything bad about Stallman if Stallman died first. Because unlike Steve, in Steve's words (vis a vis Bill Gates) Stallman has no taste.

[raganwald]

Actually, Stallman DOES have taste. He lacks a design aesthetic, but that is not synonymous with taste. Taste is about having an internally consistent means of making choices.

The reason people say Microsoft had no taste is that they never said no, they bolted any old thing onto the side of Windows, there never really has been a sense that Windows is this and this but not that.

Stallman has an extremel sharp sense of what free software is and isn't, I'd call that taste with a capital T. Now, if someone were to say it isn't GOOD taste, well, that's a worthwhile conversation to entertain.

Windows, on the other hand... No idea how it is today, but up to XT it absolutely lacked any sense of taste, it wasn't even bad taste, it simply was stuff higgledy piggledy, some things for experts who use the command line, some chrome for newbies, all next together, but never as powerful and flexible as Unix nor as easy as Macintosh, but not even designed for the middle of the road user.

In other words, no taste.

[orblivion]

I wasn't even talking about aesthetics. I was talking about the sort of taste it takes to say "no" to expressing your opinion in an entirely frank manner at certain times.

[raganwald]

Ah! I get that. +1! In my circle, that use of the word “taste” is almost always a negative, as in “Reg made a tasteless joke” but certainly it can be used positively, as in, “Reg’s commentary on admiring Steve but not deifying him was in good taste even if I don’t agree with it.”

I was mixed up by the comparison to Bill Gates, who I don’t see as being tasteless in speech but whose company I used to view as being tasteless in design.

But you are absolutely using the word appropriately, whether I agree or disagree with the proposition that Mr. Stallman’s commentary on Steve Jobs was tasteless.

[orblivion]

Yeah by invoking Microsoft I was expanding "taste" to a much more general meaning there, sorry for the confusion.

[v21]

Jobs knew public opinion, and how to sway it. Stallman is a zealot.

[jonhendry]

It's my understanding that Jobs would turn on a dime and adopt your way of doing something in place of his, IF you could make a compelling enough case for it.

[leot]

Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD.

(I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for Android.)

[marshray]

Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did.

You do realize that Apple has been dependent on GCC to build its products for most of Jobs' second tenure, don't you? Some of that is code that RMS personally wrote.

The GPL license that, again, RMS personally wrote covers the kernel of the Android system. "Great software" that's in "more hands" than Jobs' devices.

Jobs was a slick businessman like Gates. RMS wrote fucking GCC.

Guess who's contribution I value more.

[leot]

That RMS wrote the GPL, or extended LLNL's Pastel compiler into GCC, does not endow him with responsibility for the success of all free software. Do you really think, given the influence of academia, that there would be no FOSS-equivalent compiler available but for RMS's efforts?

Jobs is responsible for Apple's success. For repeatedly creating devices that have disrupted industries. RMS deserves credit for his contributions, but it is not all-thanks-to-him that we have FOSS.

Yes Apple's software has been closed. But has this been at the expense of FOSS, as RMS claims?

Has Apple actively tried to subvert the GPL by lobbying governments to avoid FOSS? Has Jobs publicly whined about the GPL? Has he engaged in OOXML-esque bad-faith efforts to keep data formats proprietary?

[alecco]

Keep moving the point of the conversation to fit your anti-Stallman flaming.

[leot]

The point was that RMS is wrong when he asserts[1] that Apple and Jobs have hurt the development of free software.

[1] RMS: "we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing"

[marshray]

My understanding is that Apple restricts the applications that it "allows" to run on users' iOS devices to the point that programming language interpreters were effectively banned until about a year ago, now they're merely severely restricted. Users of iOS devices are effectively prevented from running GPL apps because of the restrictions Apple is putting on other peoples' code on users' devices.

It's not just against the development of Stallman's brand of Free Software.

It's an attack on all software developers.

[burgerbrain]

Jobs popularized the walled garden.

[rimantas]

Gues who contributes a lot to LLVM and Clang.

[cookiecaper]

RMS makes no comment about "great software" in the post. He says that Jobs "made computers as a jail 'cool'" (paraphrase), and I think to a great extent that's true -- Apple has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker. Although OS X uses several open-source internals and although Apple even maintains some of these (including very important ones, like CUPS and X), they are still in some ways the most "locked down" computer (and consumer electronic) maker out there.

[wazoox]

> le has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker.

Actually this isn't the case. Back in Apple II times, they provided the most hacker-friendly, fully documented hardware and software, together with the built-in rom assembly listing. But this was Woz' creation (über-hacker par excellence), not Jobs'.

[cookiecaper]

Indeed. My reading is primarily that Jobs and Woz had an internal battle over the hackability of the Apple II and that Woz won out (as far as I'm aware, for unspecified reasons). Subsequent projects (Mac) have not followed the same pattern.

RMS's gripe with Jobs seems to be that he played a very active role in transforming computing from an open, academic activity based on information sharing to a completely proprietary profit center.

In the early 80s, some openness was expected. Releasing a computer without expansion slots then is like releasing a phone where you can't even replace your own battery now.

[leot]

RMS is wrong insofar as he believes that FOSS exclusively will result in more people having better software than if there is FOSS + ~FOSS.

[cookiecaper]

The post in question makes no mention of FOSS exclusively resulting in better software than FOSS + non-FOSS. Are you just debating Stallman's generic platform here? Seems a bit off-topic to me...

[leot]

RMS is glad Jobs is gone. This means he thinks Jobs' non-FOSS is a net negative for the world.

[edit of first sentence for clarity]

[masklinn]

Which is perfectly in line with pretty much all of his life and advocacy: for RMS, user potential freedom (to much around with the internals of his device, software and hardware) trumps everything.

Therefore, as somebody making locked-down everything and locked-down everything cool Jobs was a nemesis figure. It makes perfect sense for Stallman to be glad he retired from current affairs, that Jobs had to retire due to death does not really enter in his thinking because as far as he's concerned it's a completely separate issue.

Those demonizing him for his comments are just idiots.

[saurik]

(BSD != "Free" => Mac OS X != "Open". Jobs "spreading BSD" is therefore irrelevant, and probably explains the downvotes you are receiving, if you or anyone else are at all curious.)